LOS ANGELES — There was more to the 1960s British invasion than the Beatles, as known by any fan
of
Catch Us if You Can,
Because or — get ready to shimmy —
Glad All Over.

The hit tunes were among those recorded by another influential U.K. band that gets its due in
The Dave Clark Five and Beyond: Glad All Over, a PBS documentary to air on Friday.

The film includes interviews with Elton John, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van
Zandt and other impressive musicians who cite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band and Clark, its
drummer and manager, as influences.

It’s such an outpouring of praise that an embarrassed Clark almost took his producer credit off
the documentary. Friends talked him out of it, just as they had talked him into doing the project,
he said.

The band’s admirers “wouldn’t say it if they didn’t mean it,” Clark recalls being reassured.

He didn’t hesitate to end the Dave Clark Five’s short but stellar run; he called time, and his
band mates agreed. He was left with a wealth of memories.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Clark said.

At 71, he is thoughtful and soft-spoken but still exudes a rocker’s raffish air with his dark
hair, beard and arched eyebrows.

The Beatles beat Clark’s band to
The Ed Sullivan Show by two weeks in 1964, but the DC5 — its shorthand name — racked up 18
appearances with the influential Sullivan, more than any other rock, pop or R&B artist.

The group released 15 consecutive top 20 U.S. singles in two years, second only to the
Beatles.

Fame came swiftly to the DC5.

In March 1964, before appearing on Sullivan’s show, “We were really unknown,” Clark said.

Within eight weeks, including a break to fulfill an agreed-upon English tour, they were selling
out American stadiums.

They and the Beatles were cast as England’s Tottenham-vs.-Liverpool civic rivals, but that was a
media myth, Clark said.

“Paul McCartney talks about it in the documentary. There was no rivalry. We were mates.”

They were also different bands with their own character. While the Beatles consisted of three
guitarists and a drummer, the Dave Clark Five included a saxophone and a keyboard and had a more
driving sound in contrast to its clean-cut look featuring natty jackets and white turtlenecks.

Clark, in fact, was dismayed when Sullivan told his huge audience during one show that the DC5
band members were the type of young men whom “every American mother” would love to have in her
home.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s blown our rock ’n’ roll career straightaway.’ But it didn’t,” Clark
said of the band, which counted Lenny Davidson, Rick Huxley, Denis Payton and Mike Smith as the
other members. (Only Clark and Davidson survive.)

What ended the DC5’s reign in 1970, Clark said, was the realization that, after playing concerts
in every U.S. state and a number of countries, the experience of moving endlessly from hotel rooms
to stadiums had become “routine.”